


Five Things Madeline Knows

by myystic (neoinean)



Category: Burn Notice
Genre: 5 Things, Backstory, Character Study, Families of Choice, Gen, Season/Series 04, Spies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-15
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoinean/pseuds/myystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About her family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. About Nate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [domarzione](https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/gifts).



Nate was just fourteen when Michael left. Just, and so what if Michael spent the last of his allowance (and likely more than that, but where he got the extra cash, she could never bring herself to ask) on that fancy light-up watch his brother had been eying on and off since Christmas? Nate had spent the month before that going back and forth between the silent treatment and ugly bursts of acting out, nasty words and rotten behavior and far too much of the blame getting shoveled onto Michael’s plate, instead.

And Michael, being Michael, took it all with that shark-toothed grin of his, the one that said he thought he was smarter than everyone else, the one that implied he knew something they didn’t. All of Nate’s insults, all of their father’s drunken wrath (and sober vengeance, which was always worse), all of her failed attempts to intervene, and Michael would just flash that sharp-edged grin and nod like he agreed.

But as bad as Frank was, with the drinking (and without), he was hardly stupid. Michael liked to antagonize him, but even in the hottest rage Frank could always tell when he was being played (can’t con a con, after all, though Michael seemed hellbent on trying). Knew, but didn’t care, because Michael had long since been his favorite target (couldn’t stand a kid who was smarter than him, who was better at taking care of the family than him, who stopped being afraid of him as soon as he had a little brother to protect). He always seemed to know which of his boys was at fault for what (and which times it was their mother), but then he never seemed to mind when Michael stepped up to claim the credit, regardless of the truth of it. Michael liked to antagonize, but Frank liked to _be_ antagonized, and they just fed off each other like it was some ridiculous game of one-upsmanship. One where they could never seem to agree on the rules.

(Michael always was Frank’s favorite, even then. Even after Michael left. And no one would ever say it was healthy (not even her, not even back then), but it was why she had to forge Frank’s signature on Michael’s release papers. Frank was never one to let go of his favorite _anything_.)

So the month before Michael left was hell, what with Nate doing his best to get his brother in trouble at every turn or turning right around and saying the cruelest things when their father wasn’t there to do it for him. At first she’d thought Nate was trying to punish Michael, to let him know just how badly his leaving was going to hurt his baby brother, and it wasn’t until after Michael left that she realized she knew better, because it was _Frank_ who wanted Michael punished for daring to leave home, and Nate -- who maybe didn’t think things through as well as he should have -- was the best weapon Frank had for that, because Nate was Michael’s soft spot.

(And still is, for the most part; softer even than the place he reserves for his mother will always be his baby brother.)

Nate never understood that, not really. Not even when he was more than willing to play their father's pawn, because all it meant was that Nate got the attention and Michael got the shit stick. Back then he was too young to understand -- he _got to be_ too young because Michael was always there to be older -- and any understanding he might have gained when he grew up was always tempered by the memory of Michael’s abandonment.

And Michael, self-centered idiot that he could sometimes be (still sometimes _is_ , for all that Fiona’s had some limited success in trying to train him out of it), had to go and make it that much easier for the pot to boil over, because for that whole month before, Michael was rarely home.

To be fair, he was at school as often as not, busting his butt to make his grades a full month early so that he could meet his recruitment deadline (and that, at least, she understood; Michael was never one to shy away from doing what needs be done). But then he had to go and spend every spare moment not with his family but instead with that pack of boys he’d taken up with, because he wanted to get in as much time with his friends as he could before he’d have to up and leave them, too (and that was _crap_ , and a really rotten thing to do, and it hurt for a long time after, that slap in the face of exactly how little Michael’s family meant to him).

But in the end the reasons didn’t matter. Just the fact that Nate and his bad mood were stuck home with their father and his volatile temper without Michael there to get between them. And Frank was out of work again, and mourning Michael in his own way (with lots of bourbon, frequent trips up to the track, and the door to Michael’s room torn clean off its hinges), and as much as she tried to watch them both like hawks, in her heart she knew that only Michael could have prevented what was bound to happen anyway.

(And it’s a sure bet that _Michael_ knew it, too; knew that if ever there was one thing Nate and Frank agreed on, it was in the best way to punish him for abandoning the family before even leaving home. But then Michael was always keen to blame a person for the misfortunes in their life, like there was always that one right choice and people should know better -- and if not, well then they should face the consequences. So in a way, his getting fired from his old job was one of the best things that ever happened to him, because she can think of nothing else that could have kicked the stuffing out that damned superiority complex of his.)

(“Yes, Michael, sometimes life is shit, or turns to shit, or yo-yos back and forth between shit and _shittier_ , and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it, absolutely nothing you could have done, absolutely no way out except on through -- and sometimes not even then. And you know what you do then, Michael? You _live with it_. Even if it means living in shit, because the alternative is always worse.”)

So Nate sat through his fourteenth birthday with a weepy black eye and a cast on his left wrist, and the ice-cream cake had mostly melted in the Florida heat because she’d wanted them to wait for Frank (who’d stumbled home drunk two hours late and slammed all the doors between the garage and their bedroom, but then maybe that was for the best) until it was either have cake without him or have no cake at all. Not that Nate could manage much cake anyway, what with the painkillers the doctor’s gave him for his arm.

After soupy cake came presents, and Nate had liked the sneakers she’d bought him, and that Dan Marino jersey she signed Frank’s name to, but the watch that Michael got him wouldn’t fit around his cast, and his shoes still smelled a little like throw-up (and that’s the other half of why she’d wanted them all to wait a bit before trying for cake), and Michael’s bag was already packed (he’d packed so little) because he was leaving in two days’ time, and Nate was surly and in pain and didn’t even bother saying “thank-you” to his brother; just left it with the mean little dig about how much he was looking forward to finally getting the bigger room as he took himself off to bed at least an hour early.

She will never, to her dying day, forget the _look_ in Michael’s eyes as he watched Nate walk away.

And two days later, he was gone.

Frank was off to God-knows-where (and didn’t turn up again until four days later when she got a call from county lockup to come bail him out of the drunk tank) so it was just her and the boys when the recruiter’s car came by. She was in the kitchen and her boys were in their rooms, only Nate blocked his door with something heavy and refused to come out to say goodbye. She heard Michael’s voice echo down the hall, but couldn’t quite make out any of the words that weren’t Nate’s name (and maybe that was for the best, then, too).

He gave up inside a minute, and she met him as he came back through the living room. She hugged him there, pulled him close and told him to be safe, told him to write and to make sure they knew how to reach him, and when he pulled away she slipped two twenties and two fives into his sweaty palm. He’d looked surprised (and it wasn’t often that someone caught Michael off his guard enough for him to actually show it) but whatever he might have said in turn was interrupted by the recruiter’s car horn so it was a quick “I love you, mom” and a peck on her cheek, and then he was shouldering his backpack and walking out the door.

It slammed behind him (had to slam it to get it to latch; both Frank _and_ Michael had promised that they’d fix it) and the house was loud all of a sudden in the silence that followed after. So loud that she almost missed the sound of the recruiter’s car driving away, but she made it to the window just in time to see it disappear around the corner. And she stayed there, looking out at nothing, wondering who was going to get the door fixed, now, until Nate came out of his room. He didn’t say a word to her on the way to the kitchen, but she heard him sniffling as he fixed himself a bowl of Lucky Charms, and she heard him cursing as he tried to juggle it all one-handed, and she heard him call Michael all sorts of nasty things when she pulled him close and let him pretend he wasn’t crying.

And Nate’s tears were good, they were _healthy_ , and it was about damned time he got them out, but for herself her eyes were dry, because Michael’s leaving was a good thing, too. Good for Michael, because if he didn’t have this, and he didn’t have school anymore to distract him (never applied to college; never wanted anything more than the army ever since the recruiters came by the school last year; and really, it’s not like they could have afforded college anyway, and Michael knew that, too) then she shuddered to think what he’d do to fill his days. Shuddered, and lost sleep, and finally decided that maybe Michael did know best about the direction of his own life. Michael, no matter how easily everything else seemed to come to him, still needed to learn what it was to be a man, the one thing (the one of many things) _Frank_ sure as hell couldn't teach him. Best he could do was grant his son his greatest wish, her secret gift to both of them.

So she didn’t cry when Michael left, or later when the house was empty save her and Nate. She didn’t cry when Frank seemed so lost without Michael there to focus his attention, and she didn’t cry when Frank finally sorted himself out -- and Nate started finding every excuse to not come home.

It wasn’t until three months later, when Michael finally ( _finally_!) called on her birthday, when he said that he’d been accepted into special forces training and didn’t know when he’d have the chance to call again, when he asked to speak to Nate and she had to tell him Nate wasn’t home (when she _didn’t_ tell him that Nate hadn’t been home for days, and the only reason she wasn’t worried yet was because the school wasn’t calling them on account of truancy). When the whole call lasted less than four minutes and then Michael was hanging up: a hurried explanation she didn’t catch, an “I love you” and a click. She cried _then_ , still holding onto the receiver, great heaving sobs until the automated operator came on the line to tell that if she’d like to make a call then she should please hang up and dial again.

She felt slightly better when Nate came home that night (for her birthday, she likes to think; not just because he saw that Frank’s car was finally gone from the driveway) and she saw the regret, the sadness in his eyes when he realized that he missed Michael’s call -- for all of three seconds, before it occurred to him that he was supposed to be angry. But those three seconds were _real_ , and for the first time in four long months she finally started to believe that her boys were going to be alright again.

Nate’s cast came off a few days later, and he started wearing that fancy watch that Michael bought him. Wore it everywhere except the shower; replaced the band twice before the battery finally died and then he wore it _just because_ , like some gaudy bracelet. She even offered once to have the battery replaced, but Nate never got around to taking her up on the offer, and for the longest time she wondered why -- but then suddenly, it clicked.

It clicked because the school had finally started calling them. Nate was cutting class and slacking off and getting into fights, and he’d come home with bruises and scraped knuckles and a scowl when he bothered to come home at all. He’d do his homework if she nagged, if Frank wasn’t around to disturb the peace and quiet, but mostly he would find every last excuse to not be bothered.

It clicked because Nate started getting into trouble with the law. Joyriding, shoplifting, loitering, vandalism. He’d already been stealing cigarettes from her purse, but then all of a sudden he was taking money, too. He did just well enough in school to stay enrolled, and that wasn’t for any self-motivated reason but rather how very much he was aware that school was just about the only place his father wouldn’t go to find him.

It clicked because the guidance counselor said that Nate was acting out because he didn’t know how to reconcile loving Michael with being angry at him, that he was turning his own personal confliction into a generalized rage against the world -- and she had to grit her teeth in an impatient smile to avoid calling the poor woman an _incompetent moron_. Yes, Nate had problems, but they couldn’t be explained away with pop psychology, and they certainly couldn’t be made all better with hugs and validation or whatever the heck the counselor had droned on and on _and on_ about.

Nate loved Michael, and Nate was angry at Michael, but love and anger are hardly polar opposites and any idiot should know that. And Nate was stealing cars, and spoiling for fights, and hanging out with all the wrong crowds -- and getting into all kinds of trouble he wouldn’t have been up for otherwise -- for one reason and one reason only, and it had nothing to do with “the inability to find a proper outlet for all his negative emotions.” Such bullshit, that. Who the hell ever learned how to handle teenaged boys by reading books about it?

 _Michael_ stole cars, and _Michael_ won fights, and _Michael_ kept the bullies off Nate’s back and their father from looking twice. And then all of a sudden Michael was gone and Nate, for the first time since the day he was born, was finally learning what it was like to have to fend for himself. _Learning_ , because he’d never had to know before. Never had a reason. Probably never even thought he’d _ever_ have a reason, because he probably never even thought that Michael would ever not be there.

And learning is a messy process.

And really, of the two male role-models in his life, it wasn’t at all surprising that Nate was trying (trial and error) to be just like his big brother.

It didn’t last, of course. The gambling started almost as soon as Nate turned eighteen, if not before. After high school he worked a string of forgettable jobs, dated a string of forgettable women. Lost Michael’s watch (in a mugging, or so he’d said, but really she knew it went to some loan-shark, come to collect) and took a swing at his father when Frank dared to make some snide remark. (Blackened Frank’s eye, and spent the next four weeks grinning at him with Michael’s grin while his jaw was wired shut.)

Nate moved out soon after that. And never moved back in, no matter how bad his financial situation got, until after Frank was dead.

Sometimes she wonders how life would have been different if Michael had taught Nate how to stand on his own two feet from the beginning instead of sheltering him the way he did, because when Michael left, Nate suddenly found himself all alone out in the deep end and then it was all he could do to keep his head afloat, never mind fend off the all the sharks that his brother once kept at bay. Sometimes she wonders how big of a coincidence it really is, that Nate didn’t start to build a life worth living until his big brother came home again. Sometimes she wonders a lot of things: about Michael’s life, about Michael’s choices, about how he always seems to make room for Nate inside of them, no matter how begrudgingly.

Just about the only thing she _doesn’t_ wonder is where Nate’s new confidence is coming from, because for whatever else he’s learned (or hasn’t learned) in life, whenever Michael Westen, super-spy, doesn’t have anyone else to turn to, he’s turns instead to his little brother, and hasn’t been let down yet.

(The last time Nate’s arm was in a cast, Michael -- who seemed to feel far too guilty about it for the mugging story to wash -- brought home an ice-cream cake, and the three of them sat around the table and talked about Nate’s limo company. Then, when this time the cab came and honked for Nate, Michael hugged his brother goodbye and went back inside to do the dishes. And she didn’t cry, she really didn’t. It’s just that the living room hadn’t been dusted in a while.)


	2. About Sam

All told, Sam spent six months living in her guest room, presumably at Michael’s request, presumably because Sam needed a place to stay after his lady friend kicked him out and neither Michael nor Fiona were eager to take him in. Presumably, Sam just needed a bed for a few days until he could get a line on either his next true love or, barring that, maybe even a place of his own. Presumably, he really had intended the situation to be temporary, until somewhere down along the line he figured -- why pay rent, when he could stay with her for free?

Presumably, they all thought she was an _idiot_ , but then that was hardly new.

At least Sam was honest with her though, when he told her why Veronica had kicked him out. And for what it was worth, she’d told him she agreed with Fi, and that if the girl had really been the one for him her response would have been to slap him upside the head and ask instead if he _would_ marry her, if he could. Of course she was also betting that Sam would have said yes to that, but then at the time she really had thought Sam’s little “I was married in the seventies; it was a mistake neither of us ever bothered to fix” was the complete and total truth, that Sam would have been willing to ask one of his many buddies to track down his one-time bride and get the ball rolling on a long overdue divorce, but then that was Sam for you.

She’s pretty sure that Sam’s forgotten more about imaginative truth-telling than her son will ever know. It’s part and parcel of why she feels that she knows Sam the least of all.

Other people, she knows, can spend six months together under the same roof and wind up the best of friends, or the worst of enemies, or even just two people who can go along to get along purely for the sake of the bills. But then those people, she _also_ knows, are _normal_ people, people who don’t decide to cohabitate simply because one feels the other needs protection. Or because one’s _son_ feels that _his mother_ needs protection and the other agrees, simply because that mother’s son had asked him to.

For those people, those perfectly normal people who lead perfectly normal lives, lives that don’t involve guns and explosives and well-intentioned (and not-so-well-intentioned) lies, six months is plenty of time to get to know their only houseguest, but then again those normal people have normal houseguests who haven’t made such a career out of hiding the truth that by now the act is habit as much as it is anything else.

Once upon a time she wouldn’t have thought that of Sam, wouldn’t have thought that _anyone_ could bend the truth around them like that to create a such convenient place to hide, but then once upon a time she _also_ thought that lies were lies and truths were truths, and none of that funny business with mixing the two or turning one into the other. Sam, she’s come to learn, is frighteningly good at both.

Not like Michael.

Michael, dearly though she loves him, will still lie straight to her face if it suits him, though at least she can tell when he’s doing it. Or sometimes, if she pushes hard enough, he’ll give just enough of an answer to get her to stop asking, and while the words can be anything from vague half-truth to total crap at least she knows how to tell the difference. In a way, she almost prefers the times when he just flat out tells her that he can’t (won’t) tell her anything, because at least then he’s (finally) being honest with her. Not that it stops her from pushing anyway -- he’s her son, damn it! She worries -- but then Michael has spent the past two _decades_ staking his life (and sometimes, she’s sure, the lives of others, too; the lives of his friends most often) on the strength of those lies, on his ability to bluff his way past God himself if he has to. And the simple fact that they’re all still alive is proof enough that he’s good at it.

Sam, on the other hand, is not one to resort to lies when a convenient truth would serve just as well.

And sure, he used to be just as bad as Michael, what with the evasions and the hedging and the careful non-answers. But then -- and maybe it was when he moved in, when they started really getting to know each other; or maybe it was after that, when she dismissed his protection and all but ordered him to go look after her son instead -- and for whatever reason, Sam’s not-lying started to get a whole lot more creative. She likes to think that maybe it's because he’s come to have too much respect for her to keep dissembling, but that’s probably just wishful thinking. Sam knows -- _knows_ , she can see it in his eyes -- the way that secrets can clutter up a home, can make relationships far too messy to ever sort out right, and his feelings towards her aside, the simple fact is that Sam respects _Michael_ far too much to bring even more tension into this house (the house that Michael grew up in, because she has a feeling that Sam knows all about that, too) unless he absolutely has to.

There are times of course when he favors Michael’s trick of telling her straight up when he can’t talk, but even _that_ has more of a ring of truth to it than anything her son might say, given the exact same situation, because with Michael those words are an excuse, a convenient exit from the conversation. Sam, on the other hand, has never seemed to feel the need to run from her (maybe because she’s never given him a reason). Protect her, sure. Protect his privacy, though she’s reasonably certain that she’s not the only one he protects it _from_ (and it really is a sobering thought, that while Sam might know more about Michael than anyone else on earth -- herself included -- it’s a sure bet that Michael probably doesn’t know Sam at least half as well as he thinks he does, but at least it’s something they have in common). Protect all those little government secrets still locked inside his head, and for all that that’s so often been Michael’s favorite tune, Sam’s eyes are always solemn when he sings it. He isn’t dismissive, or patronizing, or looking for the fastest way to wriggle off the hook. No, with Sam she knows he isn’t just blowing smoke, though whether or not he can’t (or won’t) of his own accord or because he’s simply following Michael’s lead, she honestly can’t say. But the point is that whenever she asks Sam a question, she knows he’ll answer it, and that not one word of it will be anything less than the truth.

It will be a lot less than the _whole_ truth -- she’s fairly certain that Sam’s never told her the whole truth about _anything_ before -- but it’s still better than any lie would be.

Of course, she’s _also_ certain that Sam could probably get away with an outright lie and she’d likely never know the difference (is certain that Sam _has_ gotten away with outright lies before, and she _hasn’t_ known the difference), but she likes to give him the benefit of the doubt, there ( _needs to_ , because she’s never been able to trust someone she can’t catch out in a lie, but not trusting Sam is just not in the cards; not when Michael trusts him so completely). And she can, because while Sam’s way with words might just put all the politicians straight to shame, it really didn’t take her long at all to figure out that any truth she wants to get out of him will shine through bright and clear if she ignores his mouth completely and focuses on the rest of him instead.

It may be a cliché, but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. With Sam, actions really do speak louder. You just have to know how to listen.

For instance, back when he was living in her guest room (Nate’s old room, or rather his first room since his old room was really Michael's), and he’d get home from another day of helping Michael with whatever it was that Michael needed help with, well she could tell a lot about what kind of day he’d had inside the first five minutes based solely on where he headed after walking in the door. Granted, part of that was simple deduction -- if he hit the bathroom first it was a good bet that he’d just come from surveillance of some kind or another -- but the other part, the larger part, wasn’t so much about figuring when two plus two was four as it was about the reverse, about when you knew the four to start with and had to work out if it came from two and two or one and three or thirteen minus nine. And spy she might not be but that doesn’t mean she’s not observant, or that she doesn’t know what goes on in her own home. And anyway, it’s not like Sam’s patterns were hard to find. In fact, they really were quite simple if you just knew where to look. And she knew.

The drinking.

(Really, what else could it possibly have been? For her sins, the irony still burns worse than the cheapest of Franks's cheap bourbons.)

Her edges were a little rusty, but the skills themselves were still intact, so it didn’t take her long at all to figure out that the days when Sam came home and made a beeline for her fridge were actually the good days. On the good days, if he had the time to spare, he was generally willing to spin her a tale or two over a beer or five. Often they were stories of his own exploits, and she’s pretty sure he’s made her an accomplice to more than a few felonies just by sharing them, but then again they also tended to paint her son as a kind of Robin Hood, and if robbing the rich criminals to give back to the poor clients meant they had to fracture a few laws, well. She’s never had much use for bureaucracy anyway.

And good days were common, thankfully, but not so much that she’d say they were the norm. There were other days, too. Days when Sam would ignore her fridge entirely. If he went instead straight for the shower, then she knew that he was involved in something messy -- literally -- and if he went straight to bed then it was because he was too exhausted to enjoy his drinking properly. Those days usually followed nights where he hadn’t been home at all though, so she figured he deserved the rest instead of an inquisition on just where the hell he’d been (or why the hell he was coming home with bruises and scraped knuckles). If Sam was home, and looking forward to his sleep, then there was nothing so wrong that she couldn’t wait a few hours to hear about it. She trusted him that much, at least.

There were times though that Sam ignored her fridge for reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with himself or his own comfort. Sometimes he came home just to grab the tools from the garage, or another cell phone from the box of them he kept in the closet. Sometimes he came back for the ammunition in the lockbox under his bed or any one of his half-dozen handguns. Those were Sam’s busy days, and they made her curious more than anything else. He always told her what he came for, if she was there to catch him in the act, but then it wasn’t like he could exactly hide the fact that he was performing a rushed reassembly of some gun or other while ditching his Hawaiian shirt for a summer-weight suit and tie.

And it probably _said something_ , that those explanations always involved their clients or the fact that Michael was always off someplace with Fi, leaving Sam with the more unpleasant part of the job, but she never quite figured out what it was. Just that if things were really bad, Sam would either come home to stay, usually with the kind of firepower he normally kept locked up in his storage unit, or to tell her to go pay cash at some rattrap motel somewhere while he made a show of battening down the hatches. So whatever the real stories were behind those busy days, well she might worry if Sam was anyone other than Sam, and if he was trying to help anyone who wasn’t Michael (or Fiona), but Sam was Sam and her family was never normal to begin with. Why the hell would she expect them to start now?

But for all the ways he’d found to tell her that she didn’t have to worry (yet), there were still plenty of times when all Sam’s cues fairly screamed the opposite. Sam liked his booze, she knew that well enough, and he never turned down a mixed drink if she offered to make one up, but it didn’t take her long to notice that he never once decided to fix one for himself. Not even when she wasn’t there to see it -- she would have known -- so whenever he decided to forgo the fridge in favor of the liquor cabinet she damned well knew it was time to sit up and take notice, because Sam only went for the hard stuff when beer alone just wouldn’t cut it.

(And while that's certainly an odd tick for someone who practically inhales mojitos, it's still one she's never quite felt comfortable in asking after, because of course Sam would tell her something of the truth and if she's learned nothing else in these three-plus years of Michael being home, it's that the truth doesn't always matter even half as much as she once thought, no matter that it still cuts sometimes twice as sharp as she'd been used to. And she genuinely _likes_ Sam, so her curiosity takes a back seat.)

It was a sight that never failed to set her teeth on edge. Instinct, maybe; that old conditioning rearing its ugly head again, but regardless she was always careful around Sam on days like that. She knew just how to watch him out of the corner of her eye and have it look like she was doing nothing of the kind, knew never to approach him before he’d taken that first sip (or _gulp_ , as the case may be), knew never to mention the drinking when she finally _did_ speak up. Sam always looked sheepish whenever she caught his eye, like he knew he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar, like deciding to take his booze straight up was a weakness he needed to apologize for. (And even when she wasn’t looking -- even when she could have sworn he didn’t even know she was there keeping track of him with the reflections in the darkened window panes -- Sam always kept himself perfectly still, his hands resting on the counter -- fingers splayed -- when he wasn’t reaching for the glass; the glass he never held onto any longer than was necessary. It made her wonder sometimes just what the hell Sam _knew_ \-- or if his knowledge had anything to do with them at all, and wasn't just some sad coincidence.)

And after a while she found that, if she waited long enough, then he might just let slip some small portion of the truth over however many fingers’ worth of whatever it was he’d grabbed for. If she gave him a neutral opening. If he could say something more than “sorry Maddie, this one’s need to know.” And those truths often snuck out as complaints, either about their clients inability to take direction, or one of his many contacts not being as helpful as he thought they should be. Fortunately she knew enough to take those complaints for the literal truths they mostly were. What Sam _wasn’t_ saying though -- indeed, what Sam _never_ said no matter how much alcohol she plied him with -- was just how close a call someone had because that client picked the wrong time to think for themselves, or because that source withheld some vital piece of information, because Sam only drank like that when he needed to calm his nerves, and it certainly didn’t help her imagination any to know that Sam wasn’t exactly an easy man to get worked up in the first place.

Good for _her_ nerves, then, that even the man’s hard drinking was easy enough to read. If Sam stopped at just one glass, then things were really not as bad as they seemed. Whatever the hell had happened was already over before he even walked through the door, no harm no foul (or at least no shares of either that couldn’t be set right, if indeed they hadn’t been already), and the liquor was just there to help smooth out the final bumps along the way back down. He’d drink, and he’d moan and sigh and bitch and get it all out of his system, then head back into the sun room and set to work, or out to the garage for whatever project he had on the books, or out into the yard to prune the hedges or whatever if he needed the air.

She came to think of the one glass days as Sam’s aggravation days. Everybody had them. Granted, not because the people they’re trying to help are more enthusiastic than bright, or because their cop friends are refusing to discuss ongoing investigations with them because they can’t exactly come clean about why they need the information, but then the price of leading a not-normal life was having not-normal aggravations. One thing was certain, though. If Sam was aggravated then she wasn’t worried, because if there’s something else she knows it’s that there’s absolutely no sense in worrying about stuff that has already passed.

But on the other hand, if Sam _didn’t_ stop at just the one, if he went and poured himself a second helping right on the heels of the first, well those might actually qualify as bad days if she didn’t know for a fact that Sam’s scale was so far skewed from normal that they didn’t even share a zip code. On two drink days any neutral opener only gained a neutral answer, and a direct question would be rebuffed with that same stony-faced, sorry-eyed rejoinder. “Need to know.” Words she has really learned to hate over the years.

When Sam closed himself off like that, well then it was finally time for her to worry.

About Sam.

Because two drink days were often followed by restless nights, nights where she would hear him pacing laps though the house in the wee hours -- not patrolling; he wasn’t armed, or at least not usually (and she didn’t think the switchblade counted, seeing as it was mostly just a distraction for his hands) -- and showering with the dawn because he wouldn’t feel so bad about the pipes waking her up if it was light outside. Not that his pacing wasn’t enough to wake her anyway (as if she’d ever forget the sound of someone sneaking out of their bedroom in this house) but she’s almost certain that he doesn’t know just how often that happened, seeing as she was smart enough to not let on that she was up more than half the time. There was no point. He still wouldn’t tell her what was going on and would just feel twice as guilty.

Sam’s restless nights, she figures (process of elimination; she’s spent as much time studying his not-sleeping habits as she’s studied his drinking ones) only happen when the reason he’s avoiding sleep is personal and not professional. He paces because it helps him stay awake, and he’ll drink coffee if it means they won’t run out of it by morning, and he plays with the knife because it gives him something to do. But he doesn’t drink, because alcohol is a depressant (and because she’s starting to believe that Sam’s drinking isn’t so much about escapism as it is the very opposite, that he just might go run screaming from the world if he didn’t have the booze to back its more brutal edges off a bit), and he leaves the guns alone for reasons she really does not want to think about (but she will, she _has_ , in case Sam is ever fool enough to give her reason).

But never once, in all the time he stayed with her, did she ever see him have a three glass day. Even on the days when he really looked like he could use it. Or maybe _especially_ then, but that's another question that she simply will not ask, and not just because she's fairly certain that she already knows the answer, anyway.

But as much as Sam’s drinking was the best barometer she had for figuring out just how much trouble they were in ( _karma_ , she thinks; if there is a God up there then she knows that he is laughing), still nothing screamed _worry_ at her quite so loudly as when he decided to stay sober. Sam was a social drinker, a recreational drinker, a self-medicating drinker, but hardly an _irresponsible_ drinker, for all of that. And the booze might be high up on his priority list (and she would worry about _that_ too, if Sam prioritized like normal people, which of course he doesn’t) but it’s nowhere near the top and she knows it never has been.

Not that she could really say what Sam’s real priorities actually _are_ \-- not for certain, anyway -- but she’s pretty sure she knows him well enough by now that she can make a guess. _Three_ guesses, actually, and their names are Michael and Madeline and Fiona (and maybe Jesse, now, too; which would make it four).

Because when he was living her, he wouldn’t drink on the nights he was standing guard. And sure he’s joked with her that Michael is the type of friend who could drive a man to drink (or a mom to smoke, as had been her response to that), and the words are both true and not true because yes, she’s seen Sam drink because of Michael, has heard him piss and moan about Michael while he’s drinking over something or someone else, but then there have been too many nights where he would leave the Hawaiian prints and Bermuda shorts for muted colors and cargo pockets, where he would keep one gun to hand at all times and busy himself with caring for the rest of them, and that plain-spoken, half-joking truth about Michael driving Sam to drink is really nothing next to the bigger, _un_ -spoken truth that Michael _also_ drives Sam to _not_ drink, too. And it’s that second truth that’s by far the more important.

Just the fact that Sam refuses to mix drinking and firearms is proof enough that he takes one or the other a lot more seriously than he lets on.

(She goes back and forth on which one it might be, because she’s seen Michael and Fiona both strip and clean their weapons, but it isn’t the same, somehow; with Michael and Fiona the gun-cleaning is a chore, or a diversion, or -- hell -- even a form of _meditation_ , but Sam... Sam handles that Mk-14 (she made him tell her all about it once, when the wait got too oppressive, the silence too heavy for just the soft clicks of that rifle fitting back together; he didn’t tell her much, but he did tell her the name, and the names of all its moving pieces) like a penitent with a rosary, and that right there is a much more honest truth than anything he might tell her, should she ever work up the nerve to ask.)

Those long, sober nights where Sam would sit, dressed all in black and loaded for bear, guns and ammunition spread out in front of him across her coffee table (her _heavy_ , _wooden_ coffee table that she’d seen Michael take a drill-bit to the day after those unnamed men broke into her house to smash her figurines and slice great gouges in her upholstery, and now there’s sheets of steel plating lining the underside that he never told her what for until Sam grinned and said: “thank you, Mikey,” that first time he cleaned off all her clutter and shifted the damn thing lengthwise so that it faced the door) and not a beer in sight except the empty bottle he was suddenly using for an ashtray -- and that's the _other_ thing she isn't sure if Michael knows. That on the nights that Sam is driven to not drink he's also prone to match her smoke for smoke and more, besides.

That time she _did_ ask, because it wasn’t like he’d tried to bum her cigarettes. No, he came prepared with his very own pack, a foreign brand she’d only vaguely heard of, and when pressed he'd claimed it was a habit he’d picked up overseas, one he typically left behind each time that he came home again. And once again she knew those words were all the truth, but then once again she _also_ knew that the words Sam hadn’t said were truer still, and they echoed in the silence where she should have heard them all the louder for it, because if whatever the hell Michael had dragged him into had him acting a lot more SEAL than ex, if it put him back in mind of night watches served in war-zones and left him sitting in the dark in her living room with guns and cigarettes and an armor-plated _coffee table_ \-- then God fucking _damn it_ , she wasn’t going to be doing any sleeping, either. Not when it meant that Michael was out there, God knows where, and involved in God knows what that made his best friend trade one vice for another and watch the door like he expected the Devil himself to ring the bell -- and so what if none of them would tell her just _who_ the Devil was, exactly? They didn’t have to, because the specifics were not nearly as important as the urgency, and it was urgency that Sam conveyed in spades whenever the shit went down.

Sometimes she wonders what exactly Michael’s done for Sam to earn that kind of loyalty. She’s pretty sure that there’s a story there -- _several_ stories, really. But she’s also sure that Sam is not about to tell her. Oh he might say they met during some secret little war somewhere, might spin some epic yarn about all the many and varied ways that Michael saved his life back then and so he owes him, now. And of course the stories would all be true, each and every word of them. But if living with Sam has taught her anything, it’s that the spoken truth is not nearly as important as she’d once thought.

And sometimes she wonders if _that_ hadn’t been just another little favor he did for Michael, too. Wonders, but won’t ask.

(She knows better by now.)


	3. About Fiona

She freely admits that she didn’t know what to make of Fiona Glenanne, back when they first met. Ten years she hadn’t heard from Michael except for a few sparsely worded holiday cards and the even more sparsely worded phone calls on her birthday, and then all of a sudden and out of the blue there’s this woman on her phone, an Irish brogue and the distinct echo of Michael’s wolf’s fang grin, saying that her son had just flown in from Africa and should be home for Christmas.

And God help her, her first thought was that Michael had actually _met someone_ , that he and Fiona were already attached either by wedding vows or the consequences of a tryst without protection -- or _both_ , if certain stereotypes applied -- and now it was finally time for him to bring her home to meet his family.

In her defense, all she knew about Michael back then, really, was that he did intelligence work for the government, and that he hated his father so much that he refused to come home for the funeral. And the last girlfriend of his that she had met -- or even knew about -- was Christine Nadeau, back in his senior year of high school, and she wasn’t so much his girlfriend as she was his chem lab partner turned last-minute prom date. Actually, she was the only reason he went to his prom at all, because -- why go just to appease his mother, when he can go with a first-gen Haitian immigrant and so stick it to his father while he was at it, too?

That’s the way that Michael thought, back then. Boy never did a single thing just because he felt like it. No, with Michael everything had to _mean something_ , even if that something was just another way of antagonizing Frank, of making the next move or counter-move in that god-awful escalation game of theirs.

So when she first heard Fiona on the phone, she simply couldn’t help it. And the thought of _my God, Michael’s gone and knocked up an Irish Catholic_ was the first thing to cross her mind after they’d hung up. Looking back on it now, she really can’t help but laugh. Hysterically. Uproariously. Just the very _thought_ \--

But no. That isn’t fair. Not really. Fiona loves Michael more than anything. Together or not together (and they weren’t together when they first came to Miami, and when it came right down to it Fiona was very candid when she introduced herself as Michael’s ex) it doesn't matter; he’s still the most important thing in her life. She helps him because she can, because she’s convinced that he needs her -- for backup, if nothing else. More importantly though she believes in Michael, believes in their work here in Miami. Believes even that they can forge a life together, if ever Michael decides that he wants that life just as much as she does.

And Michael?

Well, she knows that Michael loves Fiona, too. Knows that he loves her more than he’s willing to admit, perhaps. Certainly more than he’d ever planned to, way back when. Fiona's told her how they met in a bar in Dublin (well, more like in a bar _fight_ in Dublin) and that Michael was undercover at the time, looking to build an asset in the IRA. At first she’d thought that Fiona had meant her brothers, or her male friends, or even someone else in her family, and that she was his “in” with them.

Fiona, to her credit, did not let that presumption grow into a lie between them. And so she learned that the love of Michael’s life is: “technically, an IRA-trained freelancer.”

(The love of Michael's life is a fiery tempered Irish Catholic who refuses to bow to traditional gender roles. Frank must be spinning in his grave -- and Michael wouldn't have it any other way. And honestly, after getting to know Fiona, neither then would anyone else.)

She tries not to think about Fiona’s past, the same as she tries not to think about all the things that Michael must have done (the lives that Michael must have taken) in the service of his country. After all, patriotism isn’t exactly a home-grown concept, and it's easier to believe that Fiona back then is as Fiona is now: a woman who is both willing and able to stand up and fight for what she believes in. Just that she once believed in a united Ireland (if that was even Fiona’s reasoning, and not something a lot closer to home; from what little she’s let slip it really wouldn’t be surprising to learn that terrorism was the family business over there) and now believes instead that a nation’s _politics_ aren’t nearly as important as that nation’s _people_. It’s easier to believe that her son fell in love with the spirited vigilante she’s come to know, and not the spirited revolutionary Fiona’s past tends to hint towards.

(It’s easier to believe that Fiona has been the driving influence in Michael these past few years, that she was the one who convinced her son to act the part every now and then. That Fiona was the one who taught him how to let the walls down and invite people in. It’s easier to believe that, because the alternative means that it was Fiona instead who somehow changed for Michael, that Michael now is the same Michael that he’s always been, and if that’s true... Well, then her son has always been a good and honorable man who sometimes does bad things for good reasons and expects it all to balance out in the end. He’s just _also_ has always been a good and honorable man who never cared as much about his own family as he did for random strangers off the street.)

And Michael is the reason Fiona has stayed here in Miami. Even when they weren’t together, even when Fiona was angriest at Michael. Even when it looked like Michael was gone and never coming back. She can only hope that her son appreciates that fact, that he knows exactly how much and how long Fiona has put her own life on hold to better fit into her designated role in Michael’s life, because Fiona might have stayed _because_ of Michael, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she stayed _for_ him. Just because Michael may be the most important thing in Fiona’s life, that hardly means that he’s the only thing; and just because right now she’s perfectly accepting of this life she’s living only half with Michael, that hardly means that she will _always_ be so accepting of it. One of these days she just might decide that she’s had enough of being Michael’s consolation prize, and if and when that happens then it’ll be a pretty safe bet that her son will be the only one surprised.

Now, Michael is her son. Along with Nate, she loves him more than anyone and anything on earth, but relationships are not his forte, and if Fiona really does leave Miami someday (and that wouldn’t be leaving Michael, because Fiona would never leave Michael if ever there was a real and honest Fiona-and-Michael for her to leave, but then she knows that Michael won’t understand the difference) then her son will be devastated. And he might not think so; in fact, she’s almost certain that Michael, being Michael, is keeping himself constantly on guard for the time when the friends and family (and friends that have _become_ family) he has surrounded himself with here in Miami just -- stop being part of his life. Because while she knows next to nothing about what it was like for him, back when he was still a spy, she still can’t ignore the fact that by rights it must have been a very lonely way of life: never staying in one place, never forming lasting friendships (well, _almost_ never; unsurprisingly, Sam is the exception that proves the rule), never letting yourself even think of going home (and _oh_! How very much she wants to believe that that’s what kept him away so long; that Michael’s semi-grounded fear that his family might get used against him someday (and by someone a lot more dangerous than Frank C. Westen) is why she only spoke to him nine times in the last ten years before Fiona called to say that he was coming home). After two decades spent telling himself that the only person he could rely on was the one he saw in the mirror, is it really a surprise to know that somewhere along the way he fell for his own lies? That he really has convinced himself that, while he may like or even love this family he's found for himself here in Miami, that doesn't necessarily mean he lets himself own up to the fact that he _needs_ them, too? Or at least not the way that they need him.

No, it isn’t.

It's wrong, it's sad, it's painful to even think about, but it isn't a surprise. And maybe that's the bigger tragedy.

And thankfully Fiona gets that. Thankfully she understands at least in part where all these hang-ups of Michael's are coming from. It‘s why she's so willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, ninety-nine percent of the time. But ninety-nine percent of the time still only gets you ninety-nine percent of the way, and when that last one percent inevitably falls on Michael she can only hope and pray that he doesn’t drop the ball.

The consequences would not be pretty.


	4. About Jesse

Maybe it’s all the time she’s spent hanging around ex-spies (and living with Sam was a real eye-opener in that regard, more so even than any of the inroads she's made into Michael life, all the little glimmers she's seen of just what that life _entails_ ), but the second she met Jesse, she knew that he was one of them.

One of _them_.

It's in his handshake, in the familiar map of calluses there. It's in his eyes, in the way they never seem to settle on any one thing until all of a sudden they're settling on _her_ with that familiar brand of intensity. So many of Michael’s friends have looked at her like that, have looked her in the eye and taken her measure not as a woman, not as a person, hell not even as a perspective landlord (for all that she let the both of them stay there for free). No, when they look at her they’re looking for one thing and one thing only, and that’s proof that this short, frumpy, bleach-blond, chain-smoking widow from Miami really is the mother of Michael Westen, and she’s damned sure the yardstick they’re using has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not they have the same nose. Sam, Fiona, hell even Virgil too at first -- to say nothing of their clients -- all took a good long while to start seeing her for herself and not for the woman who raised their favorite spy.

And then there’s Jesse.

On one hand, she really couldn’t have asked for a better lodger. Sure the extra income from a renter would have been nice, but ever since Fiona brought Jesse home to her like a lost little puppy (alright, an _overgrown_ puppy, with lethal training and punchy reflexes) she’s made peace with the idea that the only normal people in her life are the girls that she plays cards with. And normal is fine, has its uses, even; but normal is not for Michael and never has been, much as she might wish otherwise.

(Much as she might have _once_ wished otherwise, because it's been long enough since Michael’s not-normal life crashed headlong into her stagnant suburban existence that she’s able to see it now as more than just her main source of maternal hair-pulling (and also worry, sleepless nights, and odd looks from the guy down at the hardware store). Now she’s seen how good he is at it, how happy the -- _whatchamacallit?_ \-- the trade-craft makes him when things go right; she’s seen all the good he’s done, all the people that he’s helped, simply because they _asked_ , and he _could_. She’s seen that her son is a good man, and so much of who that good man is, what makes that good man tick, is all wrapped up inside the spy-game stuff that it would make no sense to cast aspirations just because she’s absolutely terrified that one day she’ll learn that she’s outlived him.)

And then there’s Jesse.

Not that she’d ever tell him to his face (from what she’s seen, spies aren’t even normal in what they take offense to; Michael, for instance, has no trouble working with people he has every cause to hate, but then has to have his arm twisted to agree to Virgil getting within fifty miles of Miami and all on account of something that was just as much her own stupid fault as it was his) but Jesse seems like the most normal out of all of them. And maybe that’s his youth (or a certain lack of experience that masquerades as youth, but one’s just as good as the other, really) and maybe it's the fact that his own particular brand of spy-ness hasn’t had much chance to cross paths with Michael’s yet, but whatever the reason Jesse still gives her the impression that, before he lost his job, he didn’t have the same troubles as the rest of them in maintaining a life outside of work.

From what she understands (which isn’t much, but its more than she would have even just a year ago), Jesse did his spying from behind a desk, or in one of those sterile little interview rooms like the one she got to see up close and personal, courtesy of the FBI. Jesse did his spying from an office building right outside Miami, he spied from nine to five and then went home to an apartment with real furniture and a cable bill and the chance to go out clubbing on Saturday nights and wake up in time for Sunday football. All in all not a bad gig, if you ask her, and she really does hope he gets his old life back someday. And not just because it was _Michael’s_ fault he lost it, either.

(And God, _God_ , do those thoughts hurt to think about, stab her right through the heart whenever her mind strays too close to them, because hearing all about Jesse’s life before -- even just the little nuggets that’s he’s told her -- only makes her think of Michael; Michael and what could have been. Michael and what _could still be_ , if ever he finds his Golden Ticket -- and is it so wrong? To want for Michael what he wants most for himself, but with the added little caveat of knowing he can still stop by whenever he needs to borrow his father’s tools again, that she can still call him with the reasonable surety that he might actually answer, that she’ll never again have to worry which of the world’s hotspots he might be hiding in, or fighting in, or God forbid actually _dying_ in and she would never even know?)

And maybe it's that normal-ness (that _more-normal-than-the-rest-of-them-_ ness) that makes her think so, but Jesse moved in on a Tuesday night and come Wednesday morning it was like he’d always been there. He didn’t mind that the space was a converted garage (almost didn’t believe it was Michael and Sam who did the conversion, _by themselves_ , in less than a day) and laughed at the story of what happened to the previous tenant. True his tour of the house was very spy-like (lots of attention paid to windows, doors, and -- weirdly -- corners) but he kept his hands inside his pockets like her winter wonderland collection was some kind of priceless museum display, and was actually rendered speechless for a moment when she told him why some of them were broken.

(At first, she thought it was at Sam’s audacity -- how dare her guest blow up her sun room? -- and then she thought it was in reaction to _why_ Sam dared to blow up her sun room, that some of the people who came after Michael were bad enough that blowing up her sun room seemed almost reasonable -- until finally she realized that he simply couldn’t believe that Sam MacGyvered a bomb out of shotgun shells and Christmas lights, and that was understandable, she supposed; from what she’s heard, he and Sam didn’t exactly hit it off at first. Of course, from what she’s _also_ heard, Sam and Fi didn’t get along at all until their worry for Michael bonded them at hip and glove like a pair of divorcing parents, so at least he’s in good company.)

Jesse moved in on a Tuesday, and on the Wednesday he was weather-proofing the windows in the garage to cut down on the draft. On Thursday he was changing the oil in her car, and when he heard that Michael sometimes stopped by for tools he made sure to put them all back in exactly the same spots he found them. _Exactly_ the same, like learning the tools were really Michael’s (by way of his father, and she knew as soon as she’d told him so that he’d gotten the wrong idea about that, but it wasn’t in her to correct him) made their placement some sort of test and he was going to be graded on it later. And maybe that was even true, and there was some spy thing going on that she was only seeing pieces of (some _other_ spy thing going on that they were trying to keep her well away from) and part of it was making sure that the ex-spy living with mama Westen was always on his toes. After all, to this day she doesn’t know which of Sam’s little midnight strolls were necessary and which were simply habit.

To this day, she doesn’t know exactly what Jesse’s made of his situation, but he’s still so very careful with Michael’s tools, with the few little homey touches she’s donated from Michael’s old room; Nate’s too. And while he doesn’t patrol the property like Sam used to, like Fiona did the few times she stayed to babysit a client, like she’s certain Michael would if he ever stayed long enough at a stretch for it to occur to him, he still leaves the police scanner on like non-spies would the radio, and he walks through the house with a handheld electronic gizmo that looks like it was built by Mr. Wizard, “sweeping for bugs” or so he says, so she’s fairly certain that while he doesn’t know who set him up, he is still very much aware of how lucky he is to have fallen in with Michael and his “real-life little A-Team,” and in his head that luck has translated into taking care, into making sure he leaves as small a footprint on Michael’s life as possible, like he’s afraid that putting so much as one foot wrong would get him pitched back out into the cold.

Ridiculous, of course (if nothing else, Fi would simply not allow it), but she can appreciate what it says about Jesse, how he’s more than willing to go toe to toe (to toe to toe) with any and all of them when it's about a job, but the minute he doesn’t have the weight of his professional opinion behind him he’ll just duck his head and smile like his life depends on just how well he sells it. Appreciate, but never mention, because the lies she’s living with are bad enough without the needless airing of painful truths on top of them. Together they’ve all already taken so much from Jesse (she knows only too well; his old life has become her newest daydream), she won’t rob him of his secrets, too.

(And how does Michael live with himself? She wonders, because hand to God there are times when she finds it hard enough living with _herself_ these days. And she loves Michael, _loves him_ , but damned if she doesn’t really, _really_ not like him sometimes.)

And then Jesse.

Jesse and all his carefulness, all his tiptoeing around her house and minding his manners and always calling her Mrs. Westen like she’s his goddamn _first grade teacher_ , and she knows it's more than just innate politeness, more than just respect for his hostess, more than just the shadows of scars on the psyche of a down-at-heel foster kid. She knows this because she sees the way he looks at them, the way he thinks they saved his life and brought him home and agreed to help him with getting himself un-fired all out of the goodness of their hearts, or maybe because they kinda sorta do it for a living.

Knows it because she sees the way he looks at _Michael_ , all equal parts of awe and gratitude and maybe just the tiniest bit of disbelief, like he doesn’t know whether or not he’s looking at Michael, the man who’s taken him under his wing, protected him, put him up in his mother’s house and all for a promise that they both know full well he may never be able to make good on -- or if he’s looking at Michael _Westen_ , super-spy turned spy pariah, a legend he’d never thought he’d meet up close and doesn’t know quite what make of now that he has.

(He’s told her what is probably a very watered down version of the story, of how he sought Michael out because he figured Michael couldn’t have stayed alive so long without having _someone_ still on the inside watching his back (and _no_ , she really _didn’t_ need to hear that, thank you very much), and while Michael disabused him of that notion pretty quickly he was still able to bail Jesse out of a whole lot of trouble -- was still able to waltz right into the lion’s den and talk Jesse’s captors into letting him go free with little more than a smile and a doctored news article after bureaucratic nonsense rendered that bailout moot -- with only an ex-SEAL and -- and whatever the heck Fiona is, these days -- for backup the whole way through. And yeah, that really is pretty amazing, if all you know about Michael are the lies that someone’s spread about him, lies like the FBI tried to convince her were true, but anyone who knows the _real_ truth sees little more than business as usual in Jesse’s story -- something Jesse has started to realize for himself, for better or worse. For better _and_ worse, really.)

And when he looks at her, she doesn’t know if he’s seeing Madeline, the woman who owns the garage he’s living in rent-free, the woman who picks odd times to ambush him with a decade’s worth of pent-up maternal instincts if only because Jesse is younger than her youngest son and could really use a stabilizing influence in his life (and Lord knows it isn’t Michael, no matter how much Jesse seems to think he is), but she wants to believe that it’s been long enough now that he’s able to see her for what she really is.

His _friend_.

And the mother of his other friend.

Because if he’s not, if he’s still casting her instead as Alcmene, mother of the legendary hero, and trying to figure out if the saying is true and all the hero’s best parts come from her and her alone, then there will be no salvaging this situation when the shit finally reaches the fan. Bad enough for Jesse to have to cope with their betrayal, but for that to come as proof that his hero is more man than god, well that’s going to cut them all in ways she’s absolutely certain that no one else sees coming. Not even Michael.

Which is sad -- tragic, even -- because it’s not like Michael has never disappointed someone who looks up to him before, not like he’s never let down the one person who would have been faithful to him above all others.

Not like he’s never betrayed his family, in the name of doing what he thought was right.

And not like he hasn’t had to learn much later (and much, _much_ harder) that right and wrong don’t mean Jack and diddly squat to the people who he’s hurt the most.

But if Michael can’t see that, can’t see what’s coming at them with all the subtlety of a runaway freight train (and she can’t decide whether it's best to believe that he really is oblivious, or if indeed he really _does_ know, and simply doesn’t care), well Jesse is still a spy, after all. Trained to hide inside plain sight. Fortunately though she’s had lots of practice at seeing spies for who they really are -- and still loving each of them, regardless.

What can she say? It's the mother in her.

And right now, the worst part is not knowing whether or not she’s going to have to protect them all from themselves, or each one from the other. Family is sacred; and it’s wearing pretty thin, this constant worry that someone is going to forget that fact and damn them all.


	5. About Michael

Michael Westen is her oldest son. He used to be a spy.

- _fin_ -


End file.
